Journalists are superheroes — everyone should know it.

Published by Hannah Louise Strong

Hannah is a reporter at The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
She spent nearly two years as the education reporter at The Lancaster News in Lancaster, S.C. after graduating from college. She won seven awards from her reporting in Lancaster, including first place in enterprise reporting for a story she wrote after a ride along with the police chief during a homicide.
Hannah has a Bachelor of Arts degree in mass communication from Winthrop University. She was raised in Pawleys Island. In her spare time, she enjoys blogging, photography, gardening and reading. Her day starts after her first cup of coffee.
View all posts by Hannah Louise Strong

I absolutely lose it when I get home from work while I watch the press conference.

Tears pour down my face — and it won’t be the first time tears pour after this.

Each time I see a tweet or story, I cry. And things don’t usually impact me like this. I haven’t had too much tragedy in my life. Normally one good cry and I’m over it.

But this — no.

This is insane.

Let me tell you who we are

I’m tired of people misunderstanding journalism.

We are not fake.

We do not make up lies.

We should NOT be the enemy of the people.

Those who aren’t journalists just don’t get how hard it is for us sometimes.

We get cussed out. We are told to our faces that we are not liked. We get hate mail, phone calls. We get trolled on social media. We get asked why we wrote that story.

We constantly argue with public officials who don’t want to tell us stuff — people whose salaries are PAID BY THE TAXPAYERS.

Our Carolinas regional editor Robyn Tomlin said it best in a column Friday: “I, myself, have had my tires slashed, my car keyed and have been called every name in the book. Even so, I’ve never truly felt unsafe. Unsettled maybe, but not unsafe. Until this week.”

Don’t. Be. Mad. We. Shed. Light.

It’s simple — if we didn’t report, who would?

We tell the truth. Again, it’s simple — if we didn’t, we’d likely have a lawsuit against us for libel.

We uncover and report stories about all kinds of things — sex crimes against children that aren’t investigated properly, bacteria levels in the ocean, features on military veterans, armed robberies, murders, eating disorders.

It’s our job. We get paid to do it.

We get paid to take time to dig into things that other people may not have time for or necessarily know how to navigate and research.

I was trained to search public documents and find things.

I was trained to write fair and ethically and give every possible person a story involves the chance to tell his or her side. And because we do that DOES NOT mean we are putting our own personal opinion into a story.

Listen, I’ve got plenty of opinions. Plenty. But I choose to stay neutral — it’s a part of the career.

I don’t talk about my political views publicly. I just don’t.

I’m not an activist trying to push one side or the other. I’m simply presenting things that I’ve been told, I’ve uncovered, I’ve researched.

The issue is people are ignorant to what we do and why we do what we do.

The issue is that we have a government that is trying to turn people away from and to hate the news media.

The issue is we are misunderstood for the reasons we push people for information.

We are your friends. We are not your enemy.

What we do matters. I’d hate to see what this world would look like without us journalists.